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THE NYAYASŪTRA COMMENTARIAL TRADITION
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Pāṇini's Astādhyāyī and accords it equal status, albeit in another basic scholarly discipline. This suggestive designation, which is uncommon in the classical and medieval period, is also found in the colophons of some Nyāyasūtrapātha manuscripts of northern India accessible to me which date from the pre-colonial and early colonial period, among them an alleged Nyāyasūtroddhāra manuscript. Anvīksikī, for its part, reappears in the title of Jānakīnātha Bhattācārya Cūdāmaņi's sixteenth-century commentary on the fifth adhyāya of the Nyāyasūtra, the Anvīksikītattvavivarana. • This revaluation of the ancient tradition, within a clear historical perspective, as an intellectual re-orientation, may be understood in a very general way within the context of the regional history of Mithila or Tirhut, a region which was much more removed from the direct political and cultural impact of the Delhi Sultanate than other parts of northern India. Already the Karnāta dynasty, from the eleventh century onwards until the invasion of Mithila by the Tughluqs in 1324,59 and afterwards the rulers of the Kāmeśvara-Oinīvāra dynasty provided a very fertile climate for the growth and development of especially Dharmaśāstra and Nyāya in Mithilā. Romila Thapar has suggested that the late medieval and early modern nonMuslim rulers of regional kingdoms in northern India turned to the promotion of Sanskritic scholarship in general to assert their cultural identity, at the same time distancing themselves from the remote
57 Cf. Sarasvati Bhavana Library (SBL) ms. no. 33181, fol. 12r 12; cf. also BORI ms. no. 25/1879-1870, fol. 14r 2. For a classical occurrence of the term, cf. NV 1, 13. Cf. also Mitramiśra's Viramitrodaya (CSS 62) 9. 26-27 on Yājñavalkyasmrti 1.3: parcădhyāyiśāstram akšapādapranītam, and Prasthānabheda (ASS 51) 6, 7. 58 Cf. SBL ms. no. 33189, fol. 166v 3. Cf. also the introduction to Rāmabhadra Sārvabhauma's Nyāyarahasya, after the six mangalasoka-s: atha bhagavatāk sapādenănviksikim samäripsamānena kim iti mangalam mahitam (SBL ms. no. 33189, fol. Ir 5-6; BORI ms. no. 28/1898-1899, fol. lv 6–7; BORI ms. no. 743/1882–1883, fol. Ir 7-8 reads bhagavatā kanādena; the Nyāyarahasya, together with the Anviksikitattvavivarana, has been edited for the first time in December 2003 by Prabal Kumar Sen, but I could procure a copy of the two volumes only after this paper was already in print). The designation Anviksikiśāsana appears twice in the introductory part (fol. lv 1) of an as yet unstudied commentary on the Nyāyasūtra together with the Nyāyabhāsya (and Vārtika?) preserved at the Sanskrit College, Kolkata (hand list of Nyāya-Vaiśesika manuscripts no. 1372 = descriptive catalogue of 1965 no. 252). For the use of the designation Anvīksiki referring to the Nyāyasūtra and - śāstra. cf. also Krsnakānta Vidyāvägiśa's Sautrasandi pani, a commentary on the Nyāyasútra written in 1818 in Bengal (cf. the second introductory verse, which I fail to understand in some details, quoted in Sastri, 1968: 520). 59 Cf. Choudhary (1970: 25-26, 31-54). 60 Cf. Choudhary (1970: 26-27, 58-94), Mishra (1979: 69-88).